[Humanist] 24.780 a new book on the spatial turn

[Humanist Discussion Group]

                 Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 24, No. 780.
         Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                       www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist
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        Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 07:29:57 +0000
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty at mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: space

Quite unprovoked, as far as I can tell, the following book arrived a 
while ago. It seems well worth note here.

The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship, 
ed. David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris (Indiana 
University Press, 2010).

It is the first offering in a new series from Indiana UP, Spatial 
Humanities, which announces "the spatial turn" in the humanities.

Will interesting (? new) twists and turns in the humanities never cease? 
The spatial metaphor suggests physical distance, among other things. As 
distance increases the individuality of things becomes increasingly 
difficult to see. One sees masses and patterns en masse that are not 
visible closer up. But, you might argue, these patters are quite close 
up, not just in a statistically processed display on screen but also in 
the mind, e.g. of the reader who has just finished reading a massive 
novel. Different things, as Jason Ensor has remarked, get closer up. The 
world is seen statistically? Is the spatial turn part of what the 
Stanford LitLab is responding to?

See www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=287756 
for details.

Yours,
WM
-- 
Willard McCarty, Professor of Humanities Computing,
King's College London, www.mccarty.org.uk;
Professor, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney,
www.uws.edu.au/centre_for_cultural_research/ccr/people/researchers;
Editor, Humanist, www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, www.isr-journal.org.